The 1979 election revisited

Yesterday BBC Parliament showed the archived footage of the 1979 general election coverage. Even on a day that was too cold to encourage working in the garden, I am not so sad that I watched it all day, but dipped in and out. It's always odd to see people who then looked very young but are now old or, sadly, no longer with us.

I am going to refer to some of the trivia rather than the very important result about which so much has been written.

An early segment focused on the Isles of Scilly and in particular the island of St. Agnes which is the most westerly polling district in the UK. There were 52 electors and earlier in the decade they had a 100 per cent turnout for an election to the Isles of Scilly Council (nonpartisan but often hotly contested). A young woman and (probably) her mother were shown entering the polling station. Apologies to the current day islanders if I offended them by asking if they could identify the young woman.

There were a few women presenters who seemed to have very cut glass accents by today's standards. We wouldn't refer to older women voters as 'old biddies' today, nor refer to a gay woman who lost her seat as a 'homosexual'. Some things have got better.

I had forgotten that Jim Callaghan was followed round the country by 'troops out' protesters. He had to leave the platform at the declaration at Cardiff after being heckled by Pat Arrowsmith standing for 'Troops Out'. When Callaghan arrived, the young and now famous commentator said, 'The prime minister has had to make an undignified entrance through a back passage.'

There would be far more security today. When Callaghan arrived back at Downing Street after dawn, he was greeted by three gentlemen in evening dress on the pavement opposite.

Robin Day tried to interview Sir Keith Joseph who gave unhelpful one line answers. Even Day eventually had to give up. I remember being in a lift with Sir Keith Joseph at his department. He stared unpleasantly at me the whole way up. I got in a lift with Peter Walker at agriculture, who didn't know me from Adam, but assumed I was one of his young civil servants: 'How are you? How's it all going? Any problems with Europe?'

When David Owen held on narrowly at Devonport, no one foresaw what would happen in the next few years, nor for Shirley Williams when she was interviewed when she lost her seat.

The oddest moment of the night was the declaration in North Devon, a few days before Jeremy Thorpe stood trial at the Old Bailey. Auberon Waugh of the Dog Lovers' Party had been served with an injunction which prevented him from distributing his manifesto 'A Better Deal for Your Dog.'

Given the current success of the Greens, it was interesting to see modest but mildly encouraging votes for the Ecology Party.

Peter Walker

The death of Peter Walker announced yesterday reminded me of a couple of incidents that happened round about 1980. I happened to get in the lift at the Department of Trade and Industry building in Victoria Street at the same time as the 'mad monk' Sir Keith Joseph. As we ascended to the top floor, Sir Keith stared at me all the time as I was something that the cat had brought in.

In the old MAFF building in Whitehall Place, I got in the lift with Peter Walker. 'How are you. How's everything going?' he asked. He didn't know me, but clearly thought I was a relatively junior civil servant.

Peter Walker came from a skilled working class background in London (something we share). By the age of 30 he was self-made millionaire. As chairman of the Young Conservatives, he bagged what was then a safe seat at Worcester (Worcester Woman delivered it to New Labour in 1997 and it has only just returned to the Cameroonies).

Walker got over his antipathy to the common market and hitched himself to Ted Heath's bandwagon, running his successful leadership election campaign in 1965. His managerial approach fitted in with Heath's modernising style and he headed up the new Environment department in 1970 before going to Trade and Industry.

However, he lacked that extra something that singled out a future party leader and in any case his brand of Conservatism was going out of favour. He could certainly spot an emerging issue as in the case of the 1972 Deposit of Poisonous Wastes Act which presaged later environmental legislation (and about which I wrote a case study in our book on the CBI). However, it is arguable that he botched the reform of local government and also took a 'courageous' decision to invest heavily in the steel industry just when it was going into decline.

Mrs Thatcher, whom he had turned down as a minister of state, put him into the relative backwater of the Ministry of Agriculture. Here he bought into the productivist agenda, producing a white paper called 'Food From Our Own Resources'. He wasn't too pleased to be shifted to Energy but was then in charge of defeating the miners' strike, as well as privatising British Gas and laying the groundwork for electricity privatisation (arguably not well done).

Before the 1987 election he was so much on the edge of the platform that he was in danger of falling off at an election launch event involving the Cabinet. However, he outlived all the other 'wets' in the Cabinet like Sir Ian Gilmour and Jim Prior. This was exemplified in the title of his memoir 'Staying Power'.

Mrs Thatcher made him Secretary of State for Wales and gave him a free hand to pursue interventionist policies in the principality where he went down well. 'Just look at what Peter Walker is doing in Wales,' Ian Gilmour once said to me.

Peter Walker had a happy family life. He stayed married to Tessa and had five children. He had few interests outside business and politics, but he pursued those interests to the full.